Catalog Search Results
Author
Description
"Brimming with intelligence and personality, a vastly entertaining account of how dictionaries are made - a must read for word mavens. Have you ever tried to define the word "is?" Do you have strong feelings about the word (and, yes, it is a word) "irregardless?" Did you know that OMG was first used in 1917, in a letter to Winston Churchill? These are the questions that keep lexicographers up at night. While most of us might take dictionaries for...
Author
Description
"The Dictionary of Lost Words is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Before the lost word, there was another. It arrived at the Scriptorium in a second-hand envelope, the old address crossed out and Dr Murray, Sunnyside, Oxford, written in its place. It was Da's job to open the post and...
Author
Pub. Date
2010, c2009
Physical Desc
527 p. (large print) ; 23 cm.
Description
The dusty files of a venerable dictionary publisher ... a hidden cache of coded clues ... a story written by a phantom author ... an unsolved murder in a gritty urban park - all collide memorably in Emily Arsenault's magnificent debut at once a teasing literary puzzle an ingenious suspense novel and an exploration of definitions: of words of who we are and of the stories we choose to define us.
4) Ball of fire
Pub. Date
[2014]
Physical Desc
1 videodisc (112 min.) : sound, black and white ; 4 3/4 in.
Description
Realizing they have to hear how real people talk, a group of lexicographers end up assisting a beautiful singer get away from the mob.
Author
Pub. Date
2014.
Physical Desc
1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 29 cm
Description
The story of "shy young Peter Mark Roget, [for whom] books were the best companions--and it wasn't long before Peter began writing his own book. But he didn't write stories; he wrote lists. Peter took his love for words and turned it to organizing ideas and finding exactly the right word to express just what he thought. His lists grew and grew, eventually turning into one of the most important reference books of all time"--Amazon.com.
6) The word detective: searching for the meaning of it all at the Oxford English Dictionary : a memoir
Author
Pub. Date
[2016]
Physical Desc
xvi, 364 pages ; 25 cm
Description
"What do you call the part of a dog's back it can't scratch? Can you drink a glass of balderdash? And if, serendipitously, you find yourself in Serendip, then where exactly are you? The answers to all of these questions can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive record of the English language. And there is no better guide to the dictionary's many wonderments, its quirks, and its quiddities than the former chief editor of the OED,...
Author
Pub. Date
2018.
Physical Desc
264 pages ; 21 cm
Description
Gretel, a lexicographer by trade, grew up on a houseboat with her mother, wandering the canals of Oxford and speaking a private language of their own invention. Her mother disappeared when Gretel was a teen, abandoning her to foster care, and Gretel has tried to move on, spending her days updating dictionary entries. When her mother phones, Gretel will have to recover buried memories of her final, fateful winter on the canals. A runaway boy had found...
Author
Formats
Description
"Peter Winceworth, a disaffected Victorian lexicographer, inserts false entries into a dictionary - violating and subverting the dictionary's authority - in an attempt to assert some sense of individual purpose and artistic freedom. In the present day, Mallory, a young overworked and underpaid intern employed by the dictionary's publishing house, is tasked with uncovering these entries before the work is digitised. As the novel progresses and their...
Author
Pub. Date
c2008
Physical Desc
297 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Description
Peter Mark Roget--polymath, eccentric, synonym aficionado--was a complicated man. He was a scholar obsessed with his work, yet he had an allure that endeared him to his contemporaries--not to mention a host of female admirers. But most notably, he made lists. Roget longed for order in his chaotic world. His father's premature death and the mental illness of his mother and sister threatened to plunge him into his own madness. And so, at the age of...
Pub. Date
[2019]
Physical Desc
1 videodisc (124 min.) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in.
Description
Professor James Murray begins work compiling words for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid 19th century, and receives over 10,000 entries from a patient at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Dr. William Minor.
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Formats
Description
A history and celebration of the many far-flung volunteers who helped define the English language, word by word. For the first time ever, this thrilling literary detective story, doubling as a celebration of words, language, people and one of mankind's greatest achievements, unravels the mystery of the contributors from around the world who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read, write and speak.
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